Old Kindles Will Be Disconnected Unless You Update By Tuesday (cnet.com) 149
An anonymous reader writes: If you have a Kindle device, you must update it before March 22 or else it's going to lose internet connectivity. Losing access to the internet means that you won't be able to use Kindle Store to purchase books, and your device won't be able to sync with the cloud. From a CNET article, "According to Amazon, the update is required to ensure the Kindle remains compliant with continuously evolving industry web standards." These are the devices that need to be updated: Kindle 1st Generation (2007), Kindle 2nd Generation (2009), Kindle DX 2nd Generation (2009), Kindle Keyboard 3rd Generation (2010), Kindle 4th Generation (2011), Kindle 5th Generation (2012), Kindle Touch 4th Generation (2011), and Kindle Paperwhite 5th Generation (2012). If you own a Kindle Paperwhite (6th or 7th Generation), or a Kindle 7th Generation, or a Kindle Voyage 7th Generation, you do not need to worry about the update. And suddenly, Amazon sending postcards to remind people about this update doesn't feel that wrong.
Who cares? (Score:1, Interesting)
" you must update it before March 22 or else it's going to lose internet connectivity. "
I just care about my Calibre connectivity that I use to fill it up with some of my couple of hundred thousand pirated ebooks.
Why (Score:2)
Why does amazon care so particularly in this case that they make it manadatory.
My speculation goes in several possible directions.
1. Customer protection. If there's a security threat with regard to hijacking my internet connect and perhaps stealing my amazon credentials
2. Publisher protection. Perhaps there's some way to share books because older DRM is cracked and they can't move to new DRM if there any legacy device OS they need to serve.
3. Amazon protection. Perhaps they want to foreclose people fr
What is being changed (Score:5, Interesting)
While newer kindles are getting a newly formated home screen the ancient ones are getting just a single change to
(/opt/usr/java/lib/security/cacerts).
So evidently there must be a stolen cert out there that the machine trusts.
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Or it could be a cert that is expiring.
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Amazon recalls (and embodies) Orwell's '1984' (July 17, 2009) http://www.cnet.com/news/amazo... [cnet.com]!
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this might be the trend (Score:2)
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Great observations on your part. I'm glad there is so much logic behind it...
This might be a trend for all slashdot posts. example: stitch together a headline with an unrelated technology for no obvious reason other than to hear yourself talk.
blah blah blah blah
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While your post sounds like a kneejerk attempt at defending selfdriving cars which would likely feature such requirements.
The gp is a reasonable assertion. It's already bad enough that cars get features retroactively patched out with updates over the cellnet.
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Journalist Michael Hastings Was Investigating CIA Director at Time of Deadly Crash--
this guy was hit with that hack. said his car was doing funny stuff day before, borrowed friends car, drove his again and BOOM!
http://www.globalresearch.ca/j... [globalresearch.ca]
Not a new concept/problem (Score:1)
Sony Playstation products are not able to access the store if they're not up to date.
Nintendo products are not able to access the store if they're not up to date.
I believe the same apply for Apple products, not sure about that one though.
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I believe the same apply for Apple products, not sure about that one though.
It's not true.
Re: Not a new concept/problem (Score:2, Insightful)
A slight difference here is that those other products can still get updated without hassle when you do eventually decide to. With this case, the kindle cant even update itself after today without doing it manually via usb from a computer download.
Thats kind of weird.
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Actually it isn't. If you don't have a chain of trust you don't have a chain of trust. When a CERT expires it shouldn't be used anymore.
Those other products are depending upon a CERT that effectively never expires. This is not good security practice.
Doesn't feel wrong? (Score:5, Interesting)
And suddenly, Amazon sending postcards to remind people about this update doesn't feel that wrong.
Who exactly felt that was wrong?
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And suddenly, Amazon sending postcards to remind people about this update doesn't feel that wrong.
Who exactly felt that was wrong?
The trees, man. THE TREES!
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There is unrest in the forest...
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Another Reminder that your Device Isn't Yours (Score:1, Insightful)
All your books, songs, photos, etc., "safely stored on the cloud" can disappear at any time.
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You don't lose access to downloaded books, only the purchase of new ones.
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Mine updated, and bricked! (Score:1)
Yay Amazon!
Cue the lawyers... (Score:2, Funny)
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"Next week... Class action lawsuit against Amazon by a bunch of uneducated idiots."
FTFY....
They are not bricked, and if the person has a 3rd graders level of education you can still easily update it via USB.
Think of the Old People! (Score:2)
Unless you're like a grandma who's only electronic device besides a TV is her Kindle that she was gifted.
Damn, where are my mod points when I need them!
A couple of years ago we gifted our aging parents with Kindles and they love them!
And yes, the only other technology they own is their TV. No computers, no smartphones, no WiFi.
So what should they do? Find someplace in the sticks with free WiFi and figure out how to connect? Go and side load off a public library computer?
Great options for an 83 yro newbie who doesn't drive.
So I guess Amazon's REAL solution for people like them to access their paid for conten
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Like every half-assed company, they have something called a terms of service which likely dictates the terms of 'updates and over the air book uploading' or whatever else they do through their cloud offering. Does that make MS class actioned for abandoning their devices left and right leaving existing owners high and dry? No, they have the right to terminate service at any time they see necessary. If you're living in a bubble world then you're going to be awfully upset by this. If you live in the real world
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Are you really whining about them supporting a 9 years old product?
I'm just pointing out that this is America. A class action lawsuit is never far behind.
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Except in the case of almost every consumer ongoing contract which forces binding arbitration.
Challenging the arbitration clause is the first thing that an attorney does. If that goes bye-bye, it's class action time.
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You shouldn't be talking about lawsuits, because you aren't even an armchair lawyer. Heck, you don't even read the basic SCOTUS news. If you did, you'd know that there was an important ruling recently, and challenging arbitration clauses is no longer a thing.
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[...] challenging arbitration clauses is no longer a thing.
Not necessarily. It depends on the language of the arbitration clause. Not every law firm uses the same boilerplate language. A poorly written arbitration clause is still subject to litigation.
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That is called "the exception that proves the rule."
It doesn't defend your false claim, it just makes it look silly. Is that what you meant when you said it? No, obviously not. Fail.
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It doesn't defend your false claim, it just makes it look silly. Is that what you meant when you said it? No, obviously not. Fail.
People look at the world in black and white. I see shades of grey. I'm a great believer in exceptions, and never rule them out. If this makes me look silly to you, so what?
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A poorly written anything is subject to litigation. The existence of shades of gray does not mean that routine challenges to arbitration clauses are a thing. You aren't likely to get into court to make your argument if there is an arbitration clause that purports to forbid it.
It was a thing, but the SCOTUS rejected it completely. There is no gray area; arbitration agreements that say they are binding, are binding.
If contract language is unclear, and you challenge it, and after having won that challenge ther
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It was a thing, but the SCOTUS rejected it completely. There is no gray area; arbitration agreements that say they are binding, are binding.
Until another case comes along the convinces SCOTUS to reverse itself or revise an earlier ruling. Take abortion, for example. Roe v. Wade made it legal under most circumstances in the United States. That ruling doesn't prevent laws from being made and lawsuits being filed to overturn it. Add a few more conservative activist judges to SCOTUS, abortion will become illegal in a fetal heartbeat — if the right case comes along.
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Nonsense, total nonsense. The Court wasn't on the edge on this, and has never gone back and forth.
You have to actually learn about the subject in order to have relevant comments. It turns out there is more to it than just waiving your hands and saying "Roe vs Wade."
And yes, in this case the ruling prevents you from challenging an arbitration agreement in court. You're going to have to find some other way to attack the contract if you want to go to court; arbitration agreements that say you can't sue; now yo
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The Court wasn't on the edge on this, and has never gone back and forth.
Here's a list of early Supreme Court decisions that a later Supreme Court overruled.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_overruled_United_States_Supreme_Court_decisions [wikipedia.org]
Re:Cue the lawyers... (Score:4, Interesting)
But consumers would have to be brave enough to come forward and admit that they were foolish enough to buy one of these crippled devices in the first place.
I only paid $75 for a black-and-white Kindle last year. Works very well as an ebook reader. Not sure why you would call it a crippled device.
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Mine was a "Fill in the survey and enter the draw" prize at an Oracle presentation. I never would have bought one myself but have had good use out of it.
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What's crippled about a device that can read pretty much every format, is readable in direct sunlight, and has a battery life of several months depending on reading speed?
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What's crippled
Apparently the label has insufficient value for that person. ;)
Microsoft could learn sth from Amazon... (Score:2)
How about your PC gets disconnected from internet unless you upgrade to Win10?
Re:Microsoft could learn sth from Amazon... (Score:4, Funny)
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One of mine got disconnected from the internet after I upgraded to Win10!
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Don't worry, you're probably just a secret beta tester for 11.
internet access or amazon store access? (Score:2)
Why would they cut out internet and ability to upgrade later?
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Why would they cut out internet and ability to upgrade later?
Because it's an SSL cert that's expiring and once it does the device can't make SSL connections any more which prevents OTA updates, etc.
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Because their pants are down, and they're hoping nobody looks.
There is a giant gaping security hole that hasn't been made public, that's about 99% of the possible reasons. ;)
The other 1% are conspiracy theories.
Unless you had it's wireless disabled.... (Score:5, Insightful)
You are fine.
I personally think the best kindle made is my DX... why the hell Amazon doesnt make a full A4 or Letter sized Kindle paperwhite DX with current tech I'll never understand.
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In fact, that's exactly what I've done:
* it avoids the ads
* It avoids any chance of Amazon taking away books
* I only buy books that are either non-DRMd or can be made so
The Kindle, however, is the best and most stable ereader I've found, which is why I went back to it. But everything gets onto it only over usb under my control.
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Only if you actually have it charged, so that it can do updates. All my Kindles are reserved for special occasions (like vacations) at this point, and all day-to-day reading is done on smartphone. Consequently, I had to actually round them all up and charge them to get the update; and I would have appreciated a warning a bit earlier than 2 days before cutoff...
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Not to me, apparently. Not even in spam.
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Which was enough time to get a replacement screen from e-bay, as it had cracked, install it, and update.
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I went hunting for a DX a while back but got scammed on ebay with the only listing I could find locally. There's a 10 inch Onyx Boox that does the same job and can run an Amazon app but that's as close as it gets at the moment.
Only if they've been offline for a while (Score:5, Informative)
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Agreed, and not just that, but the patches have been around for a while.
For instance, they're saying to update my Kindle Keyboard to v3.4.2, which was released in July 2015.
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I use my Kindle regularly. I rarely let it go online, so if it were one of the affected models it certainly would be an issue.
Re:Only if they've been offline for a while (Score:4, Insightful)
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I'm actually impressed that they still support their device from 2007
The Apple Store repaired my 2006 MacBook in 2014, replacing the battery and keyboard/trackpad top.
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Have they updated the software recently?
Not for the 2006 MacBook. In fact, many third-party applications no longer support the 32-bit processor. I got Snow Leopard and Mint Linux running on my mine. Other people got Windows 7 and 10 running on this MacBook (see video link).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJw8aSxEFwQ [youtube.com]
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Enabling IPv6 support.
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Yep, I can't even find the bizarro connector for my version 1 Kindle, and it just sat unpowered for years. I have a latest gen Kindle which has already been updated. I can't ever imagine even using my old Kindle - I'd instead just use my old iPad if it came to that. This just reminded me to unregister it from my account and toss it in the trash.
Keep in mind that even were it not to connect, you can still upgrade the firmware manually over USB, from what I understand, so it's not like it would be bricked
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Actually, I'm glad this article came up. I will at least *check* my Kindle to see if it's updated. I actually very rarely use it, and charge it when I notice it's dead. So it may not have updated itself.
(I have bought a couple of books in the format, but read other stuff more often.)
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My Voyage has been in airplane mode since I've owned it, and I left the wifi off for years on my old Keyboard. It increases the battery life tremendously. Plus, I transfer and manage all my books via USB with Calibre anyway, and I've always got a backlog of dozens of books loaded on the Kindle, so I really have no use for the wifi connectivity.
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Same thing happened to me. I have a Kindle Keyboard that sits plugged in, and apparently, it just autoupdated. No postcard for me.
Update over USB (Score:5, Informative)
I think the post fails to mention: you can update the Kindle over USB after the deadline.
Good (Score:1)
I've never connected my Kindle to the Internet. Too much risk of an auto update (or just some annoying nag screen) to update my firmware and override all the various hacks I've made to my Kindle. Honestly, I got a Kindle precisely to side load stuff I already own (Humble Book Bundles, among other things). That you can do stuff like play IF or whatever is a nice extra, but the real reason to hack the firmware is to get rid of the ridiculous margin, have a larger range for the fonts, and (if it worked) to
Microsoft (Score:1)
MS can take a lesson from Amazon.
IE 6 on Windows XP is the second-most popular browser in the world, still. I say nuke that shit from orbit.
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Stop telling people what to run on their computers.
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MS can take a lesson from Amazon.
IE 6 on Windows XP is the second-most popular browser in the world, still. I say nuke that shit from orbit.
IE 6 is not the second most popular browser, not by a long shot.
https://www.netmarketshare.com... [netmarketshare.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"compliant with continuously evolving industry..." (Score:1, Insightful)
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Anyone know what's in this update to cause Amazon to take these drastic measures. Does it contain Win10-like telemetry, for example?
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You might guess that the phone home website for updates & store & cloud library is going to discontinue supporting one or more of the vulnerable HTTPS modes, leaving devices without updates no way to connect.
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It's not exactly bricking the device - it just won't connect to Amazon anymore, and it can be updated via USB at any time to restore that functionality. Anything you've already downloaded would still be available for reading as always. An AC below claims it's a certificate store update, which makes a lot of sense to me, especially how SHA-1 is being depreciated everywhere. That would explain the talk about new "standards."
this is likely due to the AT&T shutdown (Score:5, Interesting)
AT&T will be shutting down 2G (EDGE) at the end of the year. And they (claim they) will not grandfather any device until December that didn't specifically ask to be grandfathered before the end of June.
This is affecting multiple companies. Nissan handled it rather poorly, forcing their customers to pay for a modem upgrade in their cars.
http://www.autoblog.com/2016/0... [autoblog.com]
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It's a Certificate Update (Score:4, Informative)
It's an updated certificate store. If you don't get the new certificate(s) onto your Kindle, it won't connect to Amazon any more. You'll lose access to any books not already downloaded onto your device, and be unable to sync newly-purchased Amazon content to it over-the-air, or sync reading positions, etc.
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Feature? (Score:2, Insightful)
So your telling me if i wait one more day I can finally have Amazon's claws out of my device?
Sounds like a feature to me.
This is simply wrong (Score:3)
"Old Kindles Will Be Disconnected Unless You Update By Tuesday"
No. This is NOT TRUE.
From TFA:
"If you do miss the deadline, you'll need to manually download and install the required update."
So if you don't do the update, it will continue to be just fine (particularly if you're using calibre - and if you're not, WHY NOT?).
OTOH, you can update, and make sure that Amazon has the freshest ability to dump shit ads onto your kindle and pester you to buy crap. Hey, maybe it'll even enable them to apply some sort of new DRM to those books you all purchased legally, I'm sure?
Yeah, no. NOT doing the update will do nothing except force you to manually update next time.
As someone elsewhere observed, not updating may even break their ability to stream you new ad content, so there's that.
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your reading comprehension seems bad. Sure you can update later manually, but the device will not be connected to the Amazon network for book loading. That's hardly "just fine" for most kindle users unless you load free books one of the alternative ways, which most non-geeks don't
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It's true. What do you think "disconnected" means? Skip the update and your old Kindle will not be able to connect to Amazon, hence "disconnected". Whether this is a good or a bad thing depends on what you want. You may be happier with a disconnected Kindle, while someone else will want to be able to buy books with theirs.
first they drop encryption (Score:2)
now they force everyone to install magic "industry standard" update, hmmm
My Kindle is 1st or 2nd generation (Score:2)
So ... exactly what am I going to lose?
Re:You have to update to read a book? Suckers. (Score:4, Interesting)
I know you're a troll and I shouldn't feed you but....
I love books too, but I also like to read without headaches. When you get a bit older it's great to be able to adjust the font.
I love books too, but I also like purchasing books instantly without having to go to a physical store or wait for shipping.
I love books too, but I also like having the ability to take a long trip with my entire library.
I love books too, but I also like having instant dictionary lookups for new words. It really helps build the vocabulary.
My mom said basically the same thing you just did when I showed her my first kindle (2nd generation). She now has multiple ones and loves them.
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Yeah. They are called reading glasses. And I need a new prescription every few years. Either that or longer arms.
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Where are you living exactly? A Swedish prison?
24x7 controlled humidity, cheap acid-free paperbacks as far as the eye can see, with no authoritarian oversight. We should all be so lucky.
We got ourselves a nice Kobo, which is ideal for travel, but never signed up for the business model. Free content, paid content with no
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Sometimes having the books on Kindle (or in storage) is good. For example, when I was fixing a generator, and the starter decides to just stop working. Pull out smartphone, pull up manual, find a fuse that popped, replace it, good to go. I wouldn't be carrying a physical generator service manual everywhere I go, so being able to tap on a phone, find the part and pull it, was quite nice.
Regular books have their place as well. Best thing is to buy both.
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USB Cable.
You should try to look into what the term "bricking" actually means, because you're not using it right.
The device will be fully functional with the exception of being able to access the store UNTIL you manually update via USB. This is all irrelevant if you simply update before the deadline which has been highly advertised to any and all owners of Kindle devices.
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USB Cable.
My preferred method of loading my Kindle anyway. After a few instances* of Amazon pulling material off of Kindles, I'd just rather not have them rooting around on my devices.
*Granted, this hasn't happened for a while to my knowledge. But people have long memories when they get screwed over.